Sony has shut down Dark Outlaw Games, the first-party PlayStation studio headed by Call of Duty veteran Jason Blundell, according to an internal announcement made on Tuesday. The studio never shipped a single game.
A studio that barely got to introduce itself
Blundell, best known as the creative force behind Call of Duty Zombies at Treyarch, announced Dark Outlaw Games just over a year ago in an interview with Jeff Gerstmann. "I've had the amazing opportunity to create a new studio within PlayStation Studios for Sony," he said at the time. "We've been working away in the shadows for a while."
He wasn't wrong about the shadows. The studio never made it into the light.
Sony confirmed the closure internally on Tuesday, March 25, 2026. No game was announced, no trailer was released, and no release date was ever set. According to Kotaku's reporting on the closure, Dark Outlaw Games is the latest in a growing string of first-party PlayStation shutdowns during the PS5 generation.
The Deviation Games shadow hanging over everything
Here's the thing: this isn't the first time Blundell's ambitions have collided with Sony's cost-cutting instincts. Before Dark Outlaw Games existed, Blundell co-founded Deviation Games to build a live-service shooter under a Sony publishing deal. That project reportedly had an initial budget exceeding $200 million before Sony pulled funding during a troubled development cycle. Deviation Games collapsed in 2024 without releasing anything either.
Dark Outlaw Games was, in a sense, Sony's attempt to salvage something from that wreckage, giving Blundell a fresh start inside the PlayStation Studios umbrella. That bet didn't pay off.
danger
Dark Outlaw Games marks the second consecutive Sony-backed project led by Jason Blundell to be cancelled before shipping. Both Deviation Games and Dark Outlaw Games ended without a single public game release.
Sony's first-party studio closures keep stacking up
The timing is hard to ignore. Dark Outlaw Games' shutdown comes just one month after Bluepoint Games, the studio behind the acclaimed Demon's Souls remake, was also shuttered by Sony. Two first-party closures in under 30 days is not a routine restructuring, it's a pattern.
As confirmed by multiple outlets covering the shutdown, Sony also laid off 50 people from its mobile division around the same time, suggesting broader cost discipline across the company rather than isolated project cancellations.
The key here is that Sony built its PS5-era reputation on big first-party exclusives, and these closures raise real questions about how the company is managing its internal development pipeline going forward.
What this means for the people involved
Blundell's statement from a year ago, describing it as a "privilege" and "humbling" to build a new first-party studio, reads differently now. The studio existed long enough to hire staff, begin development on an unannounced project, and then disappear without a public trace.
For the developers who joined Dark Outlaw Games, many of whom likely came over from the Deviation Games fallout or were recruited specifically for this project, it's a second dead end in two years. That's a rough stretch by any measure. Sony hasn't issued a public statement on the closure or addressed what happens to any work the studio completed. Make sure to check out more:
